The Emotion Machine

The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind[1] is a 2006 book by cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky. The book is a sequel to Minsky's earlier book Society of Mind.

Minsky argues that emotions are different ways to think that our mind uses to increase our intelligence. He challenges the distinction between emotions and other kinds of thinking. His main argument is that emotions are "ways to think" for different "problem types" that exist in the world. The brain has rule-based mechanisms (selectors) that turns on emotions to deal with various problems. The book reviews the accomplishments of AI, what and why it is complicated to accomplish in terms of modeling how human beings behave, how they think, how they experience struggles and pleasures.[2]